med free birth

So there I was, 4 days overdue. I had an NST at my midwife’s office, and after trying to get him to stay still long enough for a good enough reading (the nurse noted that he was the most active post-dates baby she’d ever tried to monitor), they noticed one heart decel that made my midwife go “Hmmmmm….” The verdict was they were going to send me to the hospital for a 2-hour monitoring sesh. If all looked okay, like she assumed it would, I would just go home until my body decided to kick him out.

I had all 3 other babies at 4 or 5 days past my due date, and earlier that morning I really thought it was go time for this one. I’d had some real, painful contractions for a few hours, but they went away after I took a nap. So I asked her to check me. Ever since learning I was at a 7 without even knowing it with Leyna, my 2nd, I’ve always had high hopes/some real fear that would be the case with each one after. We don’t live close to the hospital I deliver at, and I’d really like to not ever have a baby on the side of the road. Knowledge is power!

I was sitting solidly at a 3, which was no 7, but it was progress, and that was welcome news. She asked if I’d like her to strip my membranes while her gloved hand was already in the vicinity, and I excitedly agreed. I felt like labor was imminent, and I was happy to get a little push down the hill if that would help.

As I sat up, I felt a gush of fluid, but assumed it was the gel from the exam.

The plan was to head over to the hospital, but to first stop and eat something because I hadn’t had a real meal all day. As I left the office and got in my car there was another gush, then another as I was driving, and another. By the time I was in line to order my food, I looked like I’d peed my pants. I was 99.9% sure my water broke by that point, which made my meal EVEN MORE IMPORTANT, so there I stood with my pee pee pants, avoiding eye contact with people, hoping I could get my food without anyone pointing out the obvious.

I took the food to my car and scarfed it down while I called Scott. “Hey! I’m headed to the hospital to get monitored, but they’re going to admit me, I’m sure. My water broke.”

Okay, now what you need to know is that my water has NEVER broken before I’m at a solid 8, on the cusp of transition, and about to meet my baby. And then it’s always with the help of a midwife and what looks like a crochet hook.

“WHAT?! OK. LEAVING NOW. OMG,” Scott panicked. Naturally, he felt like I was about to have a baby in a parking lot without him.

I assured him that he had plenty of time. Then I begged him to please calm down and not forget all my bags, and my camera, and my charger, and my nursing pillow. And snacks!

When I got to L&D for monitoring, I mentioned that I thought my water broke. I got the “well, we’ll test it to be sure” talk, but once the nurse saw how much I was leaking, there was no need. It was pretty obvious, and they got moving on admitting me. She checked me, and I was at a 3-4. No real change from the hour before at my appointment. I wasn’t having strong contractions at that point, nor did they seem regular, and I was thinking I was about to have a really long night. There was some talk that they would want to start Pitocin if I didn’t show any progress by the next morning.

That screwed with me more than I was expecting. Pitocin? I couldn’t do Pitocin with no epidural. What if I stalled? What if my water breaking meant nothing? What if contractions with a broken bag of water were more painful? What if I couldn’t handle it this time?

This is a good time to talk a little about my mental state heading into labor this round. I fought the entire pregnancy to feel empowered and confident, but something in me just couldn’t embrace that I could do this one more time. I was dreading labor from the minute I found out I was pregnant, and it never got better. My anxiety began to escalate in October, and to be completely honest election season wrecked me and sent me into a tailspin.

The separated ribs that made it hard to breathe certainly didn’t help things, nor did the 3 trips to L&D/the ER prior to figuring out that my ribs were separated, and that was the source of my pain and inability to breathe. I was physically done. I was mentally done. I felt defeated before labor even started.

I’d been pregnant for about… 7ish years. In my head. Technically, I was 40 weeks, 5 days, but in my head? A full seven years.

My body was revolting against me. I had a testicle/cyst growing larger each day (oh, you really should read all about that), and at my 40 week + 4 day appointment, my midwife had to utter the word “induction” to prepare me for the possibility that it might be the only way to stop me from being pregnant for ETERNITY.

(Please do stop yourself if you’re about to comment about how nobody is pregnant forever, babies pick their birth dates, blah blah. Rational arguments were lost on me at that time. That’s what I’m saying.)

The next morning, July 30th at 7:30am, I woke up to a small gush of something down there. My first thought as I shook off the fog in my brain was, “Oh, hell yes. Please let this be it.” Followed very quickly by the following train of thought:

“Oh. Shit. Get off the bed, get off the bed, VERY CAREFULLY GET OFF THE BED. Back your ass out of this thing. Scoot backwards. Don’t roll over. Oh, holy crap. Please don’t be my water breaking, please don’t be my water breaking.”

See, we recently purchased the bed of my dreams. A very expensive bed of my dreams. One made of foam that I imagine is pretty absorbent. One that we did not have any sort of plastic barrier on because my water NEVER breaks on it’s own.

And that’s a good thing, my midwife told me the day before, because I had SO MUCH amniotic fluid this time and the baby was floating so high up in it that IF my water did break, we might have a serious situation on our hands. A situation that would definitely require an immediate drive to the hospital, and possibly an ambulance ride if I felt “anything slipping out down there, like an umbilical cord… or an arm.”

After getting to the bathroom without dropping a water balloon out of my vagina on the way there (or an arm), I determined it was probably my mucus plug I felt, not my water. PHEW. And EW. There was spotting, and then a contraction.

The contraction was nothing to get excited about. I’d been having them for about 6 weeks. But the other signs were making me a little giddy. Scott was working from home that day, so I told him he might need to let his boss know he needed the day off (and the next month- three cheers for a month of vacation days saved up!). After about an hour, I called my midwife’s office. Contractions were pretty irregular and not painful at all. Sometimes I’d go 15 minutes without one. I didn’t expect things to happen anytime soon, but the office wanted me to head to the hospital anyway.

We live 45 minutes from it, and I knew that I was capable of going from 0-60 very fast, based on my 1.5-2 hour labor with Leyna. So we calmly packed up the car and left about an hour and a half after that. Then we stopped to get something to eat. It was all very casual. I’m sure the good people at Panera had no idea I would walk out with a bagel and cream cheese, then push a baby out by the end of the day.

Last bump selfie, just before heading to the hospital. Who’s happy to get this baby out? THIS GIRL.

The contractions were such a joke that by the time we got to the hospital, I was expecting them to just send me home. Nope. I was at a 4/5. (I was barely a 2 the day before.) Problem was the baby was still very high, not at all engaged. I was admitted anyway because everyone was confident I was in active labor, but I was preparing for a long day and night. Scott and I took off for a walk, which seemed to make the contractions stop. When we got back, I was monitored for a bit, then I opted to take a little nap. I was suddenly very tired.

The whole time I rested, I didn’t feel a single contraction. Not for the entire 40 minutes. But my anxiety started to ramp up as I started to feel really hot, and like I couldn’t breathe. I was dizzy. It made me freak out. OMG, did I have a blood clot? WAS I GOING TO DIE? Maybe my testicle-cyst was trying to kill me!

Seriously, the anxiety was a bitch. I begged Scott to get the nurse. I explained to her that I was afraid something was very wrong with me. She asked if I’d felt any contractions. In my head, I was all:

“Contractions? Let’s forget about the labor thing for a minute and focus on how I’m ABOUT TO DIE because CLEARLY something is not right.”

But she insisted on checking me. Hilarity! I hadn’t had contractions in more than an hour.

I was at a 6, almost 7. Baby was definitely engaged, much lower, I was 60% effaced. So a good portion of this labor progressed with the help of a panic attack instead of contractions. Lucky me?

Mostly confident that I was actually NOT dying (at that point), I decided to get in the labor tub. I was suddenly really worried that things were going to go super fast. I texted my birth photographer- Monica of A Sacred Project– and asked her to head on up to the hospital. Then I just… hung out. Just all chill in the warm water, casually kicking back. I felt contractions every 5ish minutes, but they didn’t hurt. I was laughing and talking through them. I was that woman in labor that people probably hate.

Don’t worry. I paid for it later.

Anyway, Monica got there about an hour after I got in the tub, so this is the point in the story where I’ll start to provide her lovely visuals for you all. And by “lovely” I do mean that some are terrifying. (But NONE are of anything below the bump or NSFW.)

(This post is going to be crazy long, so please click through from my homepage to read the rest and see the slideshow at the end of the post!)

On a flight out to San Francisco last weekend, there was a particularly rough 15 minutes at the beginning of the flight that I thought the plane might start rolling.

I was quite positive I was going to die, actually.

I didn’t have much to base this assumption on other than, well, the way the lady next to me was behaving (burying her head into the arm rest, breathing into her knees, muttering prayers), and the feeling of my stomach coming out of my nose. I was convinced nonetheless.

Yet, the whole time I was bracing myself for the plummet back to earth, the flight crew kept carrying on with their announcements. NOT the ones that detailed anything at all that was going on. None that were reassuring like,

“We’re sorry for this horrific roller coaster at 15,000 feet that you’re trapped on. This is all VERY normal, and you aren’t actually going to die. This is just (insert the reason the plane is having a seizure).”

It’s one thing to feel crazy over freaking out about something that may or may not kill you. It’s quite another when the people who are in charge of your safety aren’t telling you what the holy fuck is going on, and behaving as if this is all normal.

It occurred to me in that moment…

Because I relate all life experiences to birth since becoming a mother.

And then I wondered if I could take a Bradley class to for flying… or just get some really good drugs.

Kidding. Sorta.

But seriously, so much of what scares me in life is the unknown. Birth, for me, was actually not that bad because I DID take a 12 week Bradley birth class before having Kendall, so I at least knew that what was happening to me was totally normal, even if it felt like I was going to die from my spine being ripped out of my back during a contraction. Had I not been armed with all that education?

Uh, yeah. Total freakout mode would have commenced.

And the worst would have been NOT knowing all that was normal and having nobody take the time to tell me, to really explain to me exactly why my body was doing what it was doing. If my husband were freaking out alongside me, well, I’d probably start puking and praying for my life.

So, the point… of this… there is one, is scary things can be a lot less scary if you know what’s going on, if people communicate with you and if the person next to you can hold their shit together.

I think there’s a life lesson somewhere in there. Or just a reason for me to stop flying so much.